Litigation Commons^™

Crowdfunded Justice: On The Potencial Benefits And Challenges Of Crowdfunding As A Litigation Financing Tool, Manuel A. Gomez

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Profit Imperative In Risk Management, Christopher French

Faculty Scholarship

Risks in the world abound. Every day there is a chance that each of us could be in a car accident. Or, one of us could be the victim of a tornado, flood or earthquake. Every day someone becomes deathly ill from an insidious disease. Our properties are in constant peril—one’s house could catch fire at any time or a tree could fall on it during a storm. Any one of these events could have devastating financial consequences, and they are just a few of the many risks that impact our daily lives. One of the principal ways we manage …

The Child Quasi-Witness, Richard D. Friedman, Stephen J. Ceci

Articles

This Essay provides a solution to the conundrum of statements made by very young children and offered against an accused in a criminal prosecution. Currently prevailing doctrine allows one of three basic outcomes. First, in some cases the child testifies at trial. But this is not always feasible, and when it is, cross-examination is a poor method for determining the truth. Second, evidence of the child's statement may be excluded, which denies the adjudicative process of potentially valuable information. Third, the evidence may be admitted without the child testifying at trial, which leaves the accused with no practical ability to …

Economic Conundrums In Search Of A Solution: The Functions Of Third-Party Litigation Finance, Joanna M. Shepherd, Judd E. Stone Ii

Faculty Articles

Despite a rapid increase in economic significance and substantial increase in international use, third-party litigation financing remains poorly understood. No academic consensus takes account of the multiple economic conundrums that third-party litigation financing arises to solve, nor do legal scholars adequately consider obvious public and private substitutes for litigation financing that society rightfully recognizes as innocuous or outright beneficial. In this Article, we explore the economic challenges driving both business plaintiffs and sophisticated law firms to seek external litigation financing. We examine closely the key elements of the litigation financing arrangement itself, focusing on eligible cases and clients, devices financiers …

Deselecting Biased Juries, Scott W. Howe

Utah Law Review

Critics of peremptory-challenge systems commonly contend that they inevitably inflict “inequality harm” on many excused persons and should be abolished. Ironically, the Supreme Court fueled this argument with its decision in Batson v. Kentucky by raising and endorsing the inequality claim sua sponte and then purporting to solve it with an approach that preserved peremptories. This Article shows, however, that the central problem is something other than inequality harm to excused persons. The central problem is the harm to disadvantaged litigants when their opponents use peremptories to secure a one-sided jury. This problem can arise often—whenever a venire is slanted …

Ending The Higher Education Sucker Sale: Toward An Expanded Theory Of Tort Liability For Recruitment Deception, Aaron N. Taylor

Utah Law Review

Admissions officers live a dual, often conflicted, existence. In one sense, they are counselors responsible for advising prospective students. In another sense, they are salespeople with obligations to meet enrollment goals. The pressures fostered by these roles sometimes prompt unscrupulous individuals to use misrepresentations and other forms of deception to induce students to enroll. Unfortunately, students who are induced to enroll based on recruitment deception are afforded few options for redress. The purpose of this Article is to conceptualize a tort-based solution to this utter inequity. The Article proposes a broadening of negligent misrepresentation to encompass a new tort—negligent educational …

Testamentary Capacity Litigation In Virginia, F. Philip Manns Jr.

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In Rust v. Reid, a 1918 case involving testamentary capacity, the Supreme Court of Virginia wrote the "cases upon this subject are almost without number, and they are not to be reconciled," but Rust referred to "all of the decisions of this court on the subject of competency of jurors," which also had been at issue in the case. However, in its decision in Rust, the Court easily could have leveled the same self-criticism about its cases deciding (1) which party bears the burden of proof in testamentary capacity litigation; (2) whether a presumption of testamentary capacity exists; and (3) …

Disappearing Claims And The Erosion Of Substantive Law, J. Maria Glover

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court’s arbitration jurisprudence from the last five years represents the culmination of a three-decade-long expansion of the use of private arbitration as an alternative to court adjudication in the resolution of disputes of virtually every type of justiciable claim. Because privatizing disputes that would otherwise be public may well erode public confidence in public institutions and the judicial process, many observers have linked this decades-long privatization of dispute resolution to an erosion of the public realm. Here, I argue that the Court’s recent arbitration jurisprudence undermines the substantive law itself.

While this shift from dispute resolution in courts—the …

Market Intermediation, Publicness, And Securities Class Actions, Hillary A. Sale, Robert B. Thompson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Securities class actions play a crucial, if contested, role in the policing of securities fraud and the protection of securities markets. The theoretical understanding of these private enforcement claims needs to evolve to encompass the broader set of goals that underlie the securities regulatory impulse and the publicness of those goals. Further, a clear grasp of the modern securities class action also requires an updated understanding of how the role of market intermediation in securities transactions has reshaped the realities of securities litigation in public companies and the evolution of the fraud cause of action in the context of open-market …

Is General Negligence The New Exception To The Florida Impact Rule?, Stephan Krejci

Florida A & M University Law Review

The impact rule is an ancient torts doctrine that precludes recovery for emotional distress unless the victim has been physically impacted by the tortfeasor and the emotional distress grew out of that physical impact. American courts widely adopted the impact rule and it persists in a handful of states to this day. Courts give several reasons for denying these negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) claims and these reasons fall into three broad categories: judicial efficiency, evidence concerns, and foreseeability. This paper proposes that Florida abrogate the impact rule and switch to using a general negligence approach for NIED claims. …

Corporate Law - Clash Of The Concepts: When Fiduciary Duties Overcome Shareholder Agreement In Closely Held Corporations - Selmark Assocs., Inc. V. Ehrlich, 5 N.E.3d 923 (Mass. 2014), Miniard Culepepper Jr.

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law - Police Interrogation Techniques And When To Determine How Much Is Too Much - United States V. Jacques, 744 F.3d 804 (1st Cir. 2014), Anjali M. Chhatre

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Riders On The Storm: An Analysis Of Credit Card Fraud Cases, Ioana Vasiu, Lucian Vasiu

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Dead Money: A Posthumously Conceived Child's Inheritance Rights Under The Social Security Act & State Intestacy Law, Heather Lacount

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Note - Not Everything That Glitters Is Gold, Misclassification Of Employees: The Blurred Line Between Independent Contractors And Employees Under The Major Classification Tests, Julien M. Mundele

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude: Determining Authority Towards A Strictly Categorical Approach And Demonstrating Potential Plea Bargain Implications, Julia Myers

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law - When Upskirting Was Not Illegal: A Court Ordered Legislative Fix - Commonwealth V. Robertson, 5 N.E.3d 522 (Mass. 2014), Joana L. Stathi

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law - Opening The Doggy Door For Animal Rights And Other Issues Under The Emergency Aid Exception - Commonwealth V. Duncan, 7 N.E.3d 469 (Mass. 2014), Kassandra C. Tat

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Lose The Battle, Win The War: The Use, Dangers, And Problems Surrounding Rules 806 And 608(B), And How They Can Be Fixed, Gregory J. Gianoni

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

A Patriotic Playground: Reexamining The Constitutionality Of The Daily Recitation Of The Pledge Of Allegiance In Public Schools, Carlie S. Seigal

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.